Most people come to the consensus that President Trump falls towards the bottom of the list of best presidents in US History. His temporary ban on Muslim refugees into the country, plan for the Great Wall of Mexico, and recent drama with Russian government are just a few of the reasons a lot of people hate that the country is in the palms of his hands for the next couple of years.

The reality is though, the US has had many other horrible presidents in its past (contingent on discrimination against minorities).

There’s a lot of things that fascinate me. Irony, paradoxes, and contradictions to name a few are always fun to think about because you can easily get lost in them. I’m also fascinated by body art, but that’s off topic.

There are many topical taboos in society which cause us to feel awkward and tense when they come up in conversations. Sex. Sex. Sex. SEX is one of them, and I find it hilarious that it’s so shunned and considered indecent. Even as I have multiple tabs open on a community computer in a study lounge, I’m worried that people are glimpsing at my screen and judging me. *Why is she googling sex, lol?* Hints of sex, sexual activity, and acts that are sexually suggestive can be found anywhere online, in advertisements, and in the media and through those platforms it is so normally present that I believe we’ve developed some sort of tolerance towards it. The irony. So why is it still weird to talk about sex?

To all of The Walking Dead fans out there, I’m sorry for the triggering picture. I know, it still hurts me too.

Among the many philosophies I have learned about in the course of my Humanities Core class, learning about satyagraha through Gandhi has been most interesting.

According to Gandhi in Hind Swaraj, “satyagraha” can be translated to Indian-modified civil disobedience. Civil disobedience and more generally pacifism are most notably the ultimate forms of resistance believed by Gandhi. He says that the force of your soul compared to brute force is far more powerful and effective and that “fear’s effect lasts long after what causes the fear to go away” (Gandhi 77). This is to say that by acts of civil disobedience and “satyagraha,” the people of India could rebel against British colonizers and eventually lead to the taking back of their empire. Though I for one definitely prefer nonviolence to violence, I have to relate it to the reality of my world today and think about the ethics of this kind of technique.

The first amendment in the constitution of the United States does not protect against hate speech. “Fighting words,” however, are viewed by the Supreme Court to “incite an immediate breach of peace” which allows the law to step in from there (Hudson Jr.). The difference is that these fighting words are said with the intention to initiate violence. Hate speech can be expressed without the intentions of inciting physical injury.

Though it is scary to think that our government may not be able to protect us against hateful speech in a time when our president is tracked by many different online news websites on how many people he has offended/disrespected to date, we must use our own rights to free speech to combat the negativity thrown at us.

But how does having such a hateful rhetoric manage to get you to one of the highest positions of power in our country? Let’s take a look.

In other words: what does the movie with Leo Dio and the bear have in common with my world today?

There is a movement known as Stand with Standing Rock that has been formed by the Sioux tribe of North Dakota protesting the approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline which will be built above the Standing Rock reservation in which they live. There has been a hold on the building process for the pipeline for the government to discuss “with tribes how “to better ensure meaningful tribal input into infrastructure-related reviews and decisions and the protection of tribal lands, resources, and treaty rights” and whether new legislation should be put in place to pursue those goals” (Guardian).

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My next few posts will probably have a lot more heart in them since we have shifted topics in Humanities Core to sex, race, and gender: things that usually make people uncomfortable in conversation.

However, here in the Mystique (and also in real life), I could eat those topics for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Passion has been a running theme this year throughout my life, and I'm excited to showcase some of that here in my blog.

Please enjoy and remember: these are my opinions. They are not the utmost and entire truth and you are free to disagree with me. In fact, I encourage you to challenge me.

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